Shelter
by Midnight Strike
Summary: He pledged his life to another, but she will not allow him to forget her.
1. One for sorrow

For **Aroihkin Silverblade**, the Zevran exchange challenge

**One for sorrow. **

Her lifeblood cooled on his fingers, the stain soaked in the creases of his palms. She slipped through his hands, suddenly heavy, yet smaller than a body that used to contain her. When she struck the earth there was almost no sound, except for the quiet rustle of fabric, a lost breath.

She dressed herself always in silver, said that it shone against her skin, veiled her like the moon she was. _If you are the moon, _he teased her, _you are a crescent, your tongue so sharp that it could cut a lesser man._ She only laughed because it was their game, that for her lack of womanly virtues it did not stop him from his nightly visits.

It was Taliesen, in the end, who cut her. Zevran the one who gave consent, the nod before he pressed his lips to the pale skin of a bared shoulder, a brand that labeled her betrayal. Like it always was, the three of them, Rinna pressed tightly between them as she struggled and shuddered. So many times she found release between two bodies, and this final time her last sound was a whimper, not unlike the end of one of their joinings.

She died thinking she had their forgiveness, that there were no secrets between them. They would be Three again, having found one another in the streets of Antiva, rotten with the stench of those dying of starvation or disease.

_You're the knight, I'm the maiden. _She touched Taliesen's chest and then tapped her own. _What about me? _Zevran asked. _You're the jester, of course, _she grinned.

He proved to be the fool for believing love could happen to a gutter rat.

* * *

He saw her first by moonlight, where it scattered by the window, forming the shape of a woman. She was even more beautiful in death, translucent and ethereal. He wanted to beg her forgiveness, his mouth open and dry but no words could possibly be enough. _If you wish to kill me,_ he finally managed, syllables harshly uttered like a knife scraping tongue.

Beside him, warm under the sheets, Taliesen muttered and turned away in sleep.

_Not enough. _She only smiled, and in it he saw retribution.

_You will suffer, Zevran Arainai. _His sentence was set. _I will make you remember me.

* * *

_

He wandered the streets of Antiva, a madman. He smelled her scent everywhere, even as he rubbed his face in the perfumed bosoms of Antiva City's finest whores. Drenched in the sweat and blood of his latest mark, he felt strangled by the perfume that she wore, the musk and essence gagging him as sour bile rose to his throat.

He carried it home each day, to the one who should have understood, weighed so heavily by their shared mistakes. But she used to be the mirror, played off Taliesen's darkness and Zevran's light. Where one brooded in sullen silence, she joked. Where a flippant remark was taken offense, she soothed. She was no longer the tie that secured them. She became the knot, squeezing, the constant memory of their private guilt. They fought in what used to be a haven, tore it apart with their wild anger and accusations.

The door slammed shut with a finality. Zevran stood naked in the room, his face swollen where it was struck.

He felt the slow slither of his blood down one leg.

_There used to be Three. _

He saw the glint and shine of her eyes in the dark. She approved.

* * *

When Taliesen left, Zevran made his decision. Rinna assisted in her own way, appeared at inopportune times when he had his eye on the mark, made him spin around in the middle of a crowded street. He was certain, all those times, that she flitted just out of sight. _My ghost girl, my once lover. _He cannot kill her again.

_Her eyes struggled to remain open, thick lashes trembling like moth wings as they plunged towards the flame- _

He bargained, flirted, promised, _bared all_ for his final flourish. Her ghost hands pressed cold against the back of his neck as he stood there. The Master frowned at the paltry sum offered. Yes, he could spare this one assassin, punish him for his recent lackluster performances. _A backward little country called Ferelden. _

If only he could call them mercenaries, but they were only peasants, driven to do anything for coin. He did the best he could, wrapped himself in smoke, crafted poisons that blinded briefly or acids that shredded and burned skin. His daggers wore down defenses, his jabs certain, but they had a mage that sent waves of healing magic, closed the wounds that he opened. He should have prepared better for the mage, having been warned previously. _Two Grey Wardens traveling the countryside, human warrior, elven rogue. One dog, mabari. One mage, human witch. _There was no room for could-haves in his profession, but he thought it unimportant for his final errand.

_Mother, I promised you I would keep on living…_

He felt his knee shatter as the arrow struck it, and he stumbled, then fell forward into the grass. Fire ate at his leg, up his arms, and he wasn't sure if it was a mage's spell or if he was wounded more severely than he thought.

He was dying. Rinna's laughter rang terribly in his ears, like the shattering of a bell.


	2. Two for desire

**Two for desire. **

He woke in a cool place, with shadows thick enough to have substance. He felt the weight of them draped on his shoulders, the burden of the after. Was this the Fade? He felt a sense of quiet relief. He has been tired for a very long time.

He did not know how long he lied there for, head resting on the ground thankful for the cradled comfort. Seconds trickled into minutes, and the world remained as grey as when he first entered it. As time passed, he knew it was time to rise, to move his stiff limbs once again. He should explore his final resting place, as a dull curious interest wormed its way into his mind. He stood, realized his legs still carried his weight, and then took the first step.

He would have made his way blindly, but a strange compass oriented. There was the steady tug somewhere inside of him, knowing which direction to turn. He pushed aside the weight of the years until he came upon an open chamber.

Rinna sat like a queen upon her throne, a crown of pearls in her hair. Her pale, slender feet were set upon the raised pedestal, for supplicants to come greet and kiss them. He still shuddered a little when he regarded her, remembering her dead glass eyes. _Blood soaking the intricate bodice of the dress, after the blade's quick severing and pull…_

"Zevran." Her voice was still sweet, still familiar.

"So I have finally joined you," he said, tried for the light tone, the joker she knew well.

She regarded him with a flat stare, and underneath, he recognized hatred.

"You forget your place," she said coldly. "I rule here." Her fingers drummed against the slick surface. _The warm splatter of red against his cheek. He did not flinch. _

"You betrayed me," she went on, voice high and accusatory, each word a stab. "You killed me. The two of you who I loved most of all."

"I did not know." His voice was hoarse as he attempted to explain. _Taliesen's arms encircling him from behind, and Zevran's fingers curled around hers. He went to sleep content, the rise and fall of their breathing like the ocean in the distance. _

"You believed him, so easily. You…Zev…even when I begged you, told you that it was all a lie. Why would I ruin what we had?" The rage slowly seeping into her voice. _Blood, winding its way through her hair…_

"I loved you, Rinna," he said, the raw admission ripped from his chest. Her mouth pursed. The twist of her features was suddenly cruel, and he saw the glimpse of the assassin she was.

He could not bear to look at her, at what he lost. _Rinna, spinning in her new dress. Taliesen, watching from the doorway, smiling. He closed his eyes, relishing the feeling of home. _He hung his head.

"What does a whore's son know of love?" She spat.

He did not flinch.

The taps of fingernails on wood quickened, an impatient rhythm.

"Look at me, Arainai," she demanded. He refused, looked down at his bare feet on the stones.

"Look at me!" She screamed, and the hall rattled with her rage.

The drumming turned to taps, to a steady beat. His head thrummed with the sound of it, the drip drop scatter, like the sound of water hitting the floor. He looked up at last, and saw that she was no longer whole, a long perfect slash from ear to ear.

She sat there, motionless. No sound would pass those lips again. He saw her emptied, hollowed eyes, her blood seeping out on the stones. The drip drip splatter continued, the red streaming endlessly, towards his feet. Rinna was dead, and there was nothing he could do to bring her back.

He turned and ran. The stones broke under his feet, cut his soles so that he bled in rivulets, _just like her_. But there was no one to follow him. Rinna was dead. He was chasing after a nightmare down a long winding stairwell, but he couldn't throw himself off the edge.

_His mother was the sun, her hair like a golden halo around her soft face. _A memory long tucked away and forgotten, the pain of what he lost._ Her quick fingers teaching his own clumsy ones, how to fold and tuck into a braid. _

A small room high above Antiva City. _Her arms thrown around him in thanks as she planted kisses all over his face. _A winter without coin for firewood. _Kisses of hunger and tenderness. Taliesen's throaty growl as they all fell in a tangle. The room slowly warming with their joined heat. _

A forest he once lived in. _Waking up to the sound of an axe splitting wood, the joint voices of his mother and father in song, and Zevran was content with love._

_

* * *

_

She had clear gray eyes and a thin face, the Grey Warden who wielded his life on the scales: justice or mercy? He thought she did not look the part of the judge. She was not a stern faced beauty or the picture of elven grace. She looked a bit faded, like she has seen too much of the world and it gave her little in return.

Her companions hovered around her, and with regret he realized that he had not even killed one of his intended targets. The time he spent with Antiva City's drifters and wastrels must have dulled his skills. She ignored them all, instead searched his face like he was an ancient book, with the frightening focus of a fortune-teller or a priest.

"Who are you?" She asked him.

Zevran had a steady response, a careful smile to disarm and persuade. The time he spent between life and death had given him a new course, a return to clarity.

_Mother, I will not fail you again._


	3. Three for love

**Three for love. **

His warden was named Tabris, and to her commands he yielded. He faced great beasts called darkspawn, understood their subtle distinctions as he felled hundreds of them under his blade. He scouted the countryside with his leader, slid on their bellies towards the enemy camp. They exchanged recipes of various balms and salves, and she was eager to learn of the art of the Crows. She showed him how to lay traps that would explode in fire at the enemy's touch or cast little metal balls to slow their advance. He showed her how to tread lightly and disappear into the terrain, to pick out this root and that leaf for mixtures with a darker intention than her healing poultices.

So the time passed, and the autumn country he came into started to wear a thin cloak of frost. There were more to reveal about his companions, stories that each of them told by the intimacy of a camp fire. His own Warden with her future cut down on her wedding day, her horror and her shame when her own people were tortured and murdered before her eyes. _His mother, burned at the pyre, reduced to ashes…_

The other members warmed to him in time, his loyalty was always to Tabris, because it was she who made the final choice, who pulled him from death into life. He offered her his services, the intimate pleasures that he could share with a woman, knowing what brief diversions could lessen the evils that they saw day after day. They saw so many terrible things, with the future tightening around their necks, the Blight upon Ferelden -

And his warden, to his surprise and delight, accepted.

* * *

She became beautiful to him, in time, as affection grew with familiarity. He thought that he would be the ever faithful servant, her bondsman tied by his oath. He would not falter from her cause, would share her bed with devotion and wield her weapons with fervor. He thought that it would be like any other vow, but Taliesen arrived upon the steps of an alleyway in Denerim, and his world once again, unraveled.

He held his lover's dead body in his arms, knowing that he had to be the one to strike that final blow. Taliesen had aged these few months, lines at his eyes and deep grooves at the corners of his mouth. _My love, if I had known that she haunted you as well..._

Tabris was the one who led him away, who helped him burn the body and scatter the ashes. It was there, looking out at the waters of the Amaranthine Sea, that he told her of his story and his ghosts.

* * *

He shook with the force of it, the anger that had crashed over him like a tsunami towards the shore. The senior warden had to be lying and he demanded another way. She _could not _sacrifice herself for the archdemon. All this talk of souls and ancient gods, it did not matter. He would damn the world twice over if it meant she was safe, ushered away somewhere without the Blight.

He began to plead, earnestly, his most passionate performance for the most important prize of all: His warden's life. He began to despair, when she refused, stating her obligations, her ties to this country and to her people without hope in the alienage.

"They left you to rot on your wedding day!" Zevran said, voice low with his fury. "The nobles and their ploys, their bids for power and the crown. Leave the lot of them to drown or to burn." He would sacrifice the bastard prince, the swamp witch, the qunari. He would climb over their bodies if it meant she would survive. He never questioned her, never disobeyed, these past few months of war and destruction. He was always ready to carry out her commands, but she ignored his counsel.

He tried anger, tried to coerce that spark of rage that he knew simmered underneath, when she dashed Vaughan's skull against the walls of the dungeon. When that did not work, he attempted seduction, but her beauty was in her force of will, because she lived through the alienage and the slaughter.

"Come with me," he begged then, lost the ability to craft lines of poetry and persuasion. His words became broken glass, cutting him open when he spoke. "I will take you to the forests where I lived when I was a child."

"No more, Zevran, please." She shook her head.

"Kallian…" The first time he has called her by name, and it made her pause in surprise. "You will love it there. The forest is so thick and it smells of life. We will wake up listening to birdsong, and our lives will be simple."

"I will buy our fares with the gold and silver you gave me." He would no longer need to hoard treasures, to prepare for the unknown. They would live like his mother and father, a woodcutter and his wife and child. "The Dalish will love you. How could they not?"

He loved her. He realized it fully and painfully, with his gem mocking him from her ear. He loved her, and she would leave him to die.

* * *

Zevran fingered the gloves that were a gift from his warden, the night's sleep lost to him as he wondered about the crossroads he stood on. _Once he traversed a place between Now and After, and once he chose life instead of death. _He always ran, in the end. When he first lost his mother and his sale to the Crows was sufficient punishment. From the Dalish when they offered him refuge, a kindness he felt was undeserving. Would he run now? Away from his Warden and her searching eyes, how she seemed to look into him, forced him to bare all of himself?

He felt tossed about in a tempest, hovered between the two possibilities. To leave would be unbearable, but he would survive. He always did. To stay, and watch her kill herself…He brought the gloves to his nose and inhaled.

Besides the smell of the leather, he scented something rich and familiar, something like -

"Rinna?" He whispered to the night.

She was there. She was still just as beautiful as when he first saw her on the Master's arm, and he had nudged his friend Taliesen to look at her in appreciation. Or the first night she was naked before him, her skin glowing like a pearl.

He braced himself, for the pointed finger and the accusations to build again, for his mind to crumble with the madness. But she only stood there, looking more serene than she ever was in life.

The moonlight shimmered again, shadows changed peculiar until they formed another familiar figure. The thick legs corded with muscle and strength, the broad chest that he used to kiss roughly, and enjoyed the way his hands played further…down. But Zevran could see through him to the windowsill, the moon high in the distance above Denerim. Taliesen regarded him with an assessing gaze, and Zevran felt his heart catch somewhere on the brambles of his personal history.

_Three of them laughing at danger, creating a chaos of violence in a circle around them, bodies falling as they reveled in life._

"You bested me, Zev." The smile was exactly Taliesen, slow and all the more perfect because of its rarity.

"You forced my hand." The sadness crept in, blurred his vision for a second so that Taliesen's face wavered like a pebble tossed into a still lake.

_Sneaking in the shadows on the way home from the latest job… three of them, eyeing the merchant's fat purse, Taliesen's eyebrow raised in a dare._

"You have something to live for now." He looked at the form behind Zevran on the bed, and there was regret there. _Tabris, humming as she stirred a poultice, with bells in her hair…_

Rinna came up then, touched Taliesen's shoulder lightly. A touch that Zevran would never feel again, and he ached with the longing.

Taliesen glanced at her, the trace of guilt still worried at his brow, but her face was raised up to him, open and free of blame. They both looked at him. He felt torn by his conflict. _His warden, awarding him with the first of many gifts, and his delight at receiving them. _

"Farewell, Zev," Rinna said, with only a slight curve of those lips, and he felt a rush of emotion that threatened to overwhelm. The answer that he sought and found, forgiven by both of his ghosts.

"You will think of me?" His voice was thick with tears. He loved them still. She merely chuckled, and it told him everything. He will join them eventually, at the twilight place where they will sleep, with his mother and his father and all those he cherished.

His closest friend, his lover and more, Taliesen simply graced him with a nod. Rinna and Taliesen joined hands and turned their backs, the moon high above their heads like a lantern, lighting the way. In the distance, the open sea widened in a path destined for Antiva.

He had nothing there waiting for him now. _Mother, beside him gathering branches, while he played with the toy bow. _He knew he would stay, because his warden was alive and could still live to see the morning after. _Tabris, stroking his jaw with a tender caress, driving him mad with desire. _He would gamble for that slim possibility, that he could still take her to the forest of his childhood, after this was all done._ Rinna, feeding him chilled grapes while he lounged on the bed, a bet made and won._

Two figures in the dark expanse of the sky, moving away from him.

_The tangy sweetness exploding on his tongue, the taste of summer with the slight whiff of salt lingering in the air…_

Zevran sat at the window, ignoring the chill, stared out at the indigo sky until the dawn.

**End**

* * *

Thank you to NuitNuit for the beta!


End file.
